Letters

The local newspapers serve a valuable avenue of communication for the people, but is it fair for you to lay your negative views on all of us continually?
You are judging and condemning those who have dedicated their lives to serving our country. Maybe we need to ask, “What am I doing for the good of my country or my community.” We are so blessed to live here in God’s mountains and need to be thanking the great source of life every day, rather than constantly complaining.

We Americans do nothing as these politicians and these cop shops have turned our home town into a sanctuary for these illegal Mexican criminals and their Mexican drug trafficking. Harboring and aiding criminals is a crime.
All the money taken from the American people and borrowed from China for these politicians and cop shops and for Homeland Security are the end results.
Each year millions of these criminal Mexicans, drugs, terrorist cells and weapons flow freely across the Mexican border into the United States and into our communities.

Kudos to D.T. Clark for her excellent article on local small-scale farmers and the issues they face. It is clear that farmers are passionate about what they do and value working close to nature. It is also true that it is very hard to make a profit; the majority of small farmers have second jobs that provide necessary income for what they sometimes refer to as their “hobby.”
Some may think of this work as a throwback to an earlier time, simply hanging on to tradition. But they couldn’t be more wrong.

She watches us grow from a little sprout.
Our banged up knees and when we pout.
Mother is there to help us out.
As we grow up and move out, it hurts
Mother, there’s no doubt.
And when we come home with our wounded pride.
There is one who stands by our side,
Mother!
As her eyes grow dim with age and time.
So many memories are left behind.
Although her hair has turned gray
She is still beautiful anyway, Mother.
No matter what heart ache we have to bear
Mother is always there

With the 47th annual observance of Earth Day having just occurred, this is a great time to explore more effective ways of slowing climate change and conserving earth’s natural resources for future generations.
A 2010 United Nations report charged animal agriculture with 19 percent of man-made greenhouse gases— more than all transport — and recommended a global shift to a vegan diet.

The Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission was created by the Virginia General Assembly in 1999 as a mechanism to manage proceeds awarded to the state from the national tobacco settlement.
The commission has awarded nearly 2,000 grants totaling more than $1 billion to promote education and workforce development opportunities and stimulate economic growth across the tobacco region of Virginia.

Gov. McAuliffe vetoed House Bill 8, which would have created a statewide full-time virtual public school with grades K-12.
Right now in Virginia we have the Virginia Virtual Academy, which my family is enrolled in. However, the current school is only grades K-7 and has 500 students statewide.
Virtual education has worked for my family and as a parent I wanted my student enrolled in this program because it offered the best learning environment.

We buried Wayne Kilby on April 13 in Pleasant Grove Cemetery.
He came from Whitetop, and we got to know each other after I moved back to these mountains in 2003.
Wayne looked tough and behaved gently. He wore a head rag and leather vest and serious boots, and he sold his motorcycle with great regret.
He did a full tour of duty in Vietnam, but he never talked about it. He could be stern when he needed to, but I never saw him be mean to anybody.

While the mauling death of a child is unquestioningly tragic, the frenzy to lay the blame on a specific breed of dog becomes a political agenda more than an act of justice sought.
Politicians and mainstream media become more focused on the dog as the source of evil, much in the same way as the debate over guns when shooting tragedies occur.
Pit bulls as a breed are very loving in nature, eager to please and easy to train. Historically this has made the breed a ready choice for “aggressive” tasks.